Table of Contents

Malcolm Smuts: Introduction: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Frontiers
Part I: Politics
Norman Jones: William Cecil Lord Burghley and the Management of Elizabeth's England
Paul Hammer: The Earl of Essex
Pauline Croft: Robert Cecil and the Transition from Elizabeth to James I
Malcolm Smuts: James I and the Consolidation of British Monarchy?
David Trim: War, Soldiers and High Politics under Elizabeth I
Rory Rapple: Shakespeare, the Irish and Military Culture
Glyn Parry: Catholicism and Tyranny in Shakespeare's Warwickshire
Dan Beaver: Ancient Liberties, Royal Honour and the Politics of Commonweal in English Forests
Part II: Intellectual Culture and Political Thought and Imagination
Tim Wilks: Poets, Patronage and the Prince's Court
Peter Lake: The Theatre and the 'Post-Reformation Public Sphere'
Peter Mack: Rhetorical Training and the Elizabethan Grammar School
Daniel Woolf and Jane Wong Yeang Chui: English Vernacular Historical Writing and Holinshed's Chronicles
Nicholas Popper: European Historiography in English Political Culture
Paulina Kewes: Roman History, Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture
Debora Shuger: Other Republicanisms
Alexandra Gajda: The Gordian Knot of Policy: Statecraft and the Prudent Prince
Curtis Perry: Seneca and English Political Culture
Arthur Williamson: David Hume, Richard Verstegan and the Battle for Britain
Brendan Kane and Malcolm Smuts: The Politics of Race in England, Scotland and Ireland
Part III: Aspects of Religious Culture
Katy Gibbons: English Catholics and the Continent
Naomi Tadmor: The Bible in English Culture: The Age of Shakespeare
Ethan Shagan: Religious Nonconformity and the Quality of Mercy: The Merchant of Venice in Reformation Context
Tom Webster: Protestantism and the Devil
Part IV: Social Beliefs and Practices
Linda Pollock: The Affective Life in Shakespearean England
Richard Cust: Chivalry and the English Gentleman
Alan Bryson: Elizabethan Verse Libel
James Daybell: Gender, Writing Technologies and Early Modern Epistolary Communications
Brian Weiser: The Shamings of Falstaff
Susan D. Amussen: Cuckold's Haven: Gender Inversion in Popular Culture
K. J. Kesselring: Murder's Crimson Badge': Homicide in the Age of Shakespeare
Alastair Bellany: Thinking with Poison
Paul Griffiths: Criminal London: Fear and Danger in Shakespeare's City
Vanessa Harding: Families and Households in Early Modern London
Christopher Highley: Theatre, Church and Neighbourhood in Early Modern Blackfriars
Roze Hentschell: The Cultural Geography of St Paul's Precinct
Part V: Visual Culture and Music
Robert Tittler: Art and Architecture in Provincial England
Luke Morgan: Garden Design and Experience in Shakespeare's England
Elizabeth Goldring: Art Collecting and Patronage in Shakespeare's England
Helen Pierce: Graphic Satire and the Printed Image in Shakespeare's England
Ross Duffin: Music and the Stage in the Time of Shakespeare

About the Author

R. Malcolm Smuts, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston, has had a lifelong interest in interdisciplinary scholarship on early modern Britain and Europe. His publications include Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in England (1987); Culture and Power in England 1585-1685 (1998) and several edited collections and articles on aspects of political and cultural history.

Reviews

It is impossible to do justice to such a large and varied volume, with so many excellent essays, in a short review. ... while the remit may have been to provide an advanced resource for literature scholars, the volume contains much that will be of interest to historians, theologians, and visual studies scholars.
*Natalie Mears, Renaissance Quarterly *

Heavily footnoted, scrupulous, succinct, thoughtful, synthetic but also original- it is a collection I'll return to over and over again in both my research and my teaching.
*Henry S. Turner, Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900*